past and present tense
by Alanabloom
Summary: "If something happens to you, it's my fault. You could have been far away from him, but I..." Piper's voice cracks with a soft but audible whimper, and Alex gently puts a finger to her lips. Whispering again, Piper finishes thickly, "I wish I'd just let you leave." Late (or post?) season three.


**A/N: **_I didn't want to do season three speculative fic, so that isn't what this is, but in terms of the timeline, I guess it does take place either late in what would be season three, or even after. We're starting at a point where Alex and Piper are together, having worked through their numerous 'Piper sent Alex to prison' issues, but without going into detail on how, since that's the territory the show's gonna have to tackle._

_I've played in this "Kubra's after Alex" space before, but in a very different way, perspective, time, etc. Not my most involved, best work here, but I needed a fic fix so I churned this out really quickly to flex the writing muscles._

_Warnings: Drugs, Suicidal Thoughts _

* * *

Piper comes to find her in the library after visiting hours, and they carve out one of those quiet, stolen moments that save entire days in prison.

"Hi."

Alex puts down her book and smiles. She's sitting against the bookshelf in the back aisle of the room, and she tugs gently on Piper's wrist as she settles in next to her. "How was your mom?"

Piper lets out a huff of a breath, both amused and tired. "She was..._herself,_" she declares finally, leaning her cheek against Alex's shoulder for a brief moment. "Red was giving a really loud lecture to one of her sons the whole time. That was more entertaining than anything my mom had to say."

"Mmm." A flash of blue uniform flashes between the books and shelves between the two aisles; automatically, Piper lifts her head, and Alex extracts her hand from Piper's hair. Alex smirks. "You tell her I said hey?"

"Oh, yeah. Then she asked for your size to buy you a Christmas sweater."

"So sweet."

The CO out of sight now, they relax against each other again. Piper absently lifts the book from Alex's lap, checking the title. They're quiet for awhile. Easy, content silence.

This is how they are now; after months of blame and guilt and hurt, this is hard won happiness. So Alex lives in it, and she lets herself enjoy it by not thinking about what happens when Piper's released in a few months.

* * *

A CO hands her a letter during mail call, enough of an anomaly that Alex is instantly on alert, even before she gets the envelope and sees the return address: A. Vause, scrawled over top of her old address in Queens. Confused, a distant worry prickling in her gut, Alex pulls the letter out with stiff, clumsy fingers.

It's her own handwriting, dark, all caps scrawl. Alex's eyes land on the top of the page, finding the DEAR PIPES she wrote so many times last winter, and her stomach folds unpleasantly.

"You got a letter?" Piper's suddenly at her side, peering curiously over Alex's shoulder. "Wait..." Piper leans in even closer, frowning. "Did you take this from my bunk?"

"No."

There's no comprehension on Piper's face, so Alex stands up and grabs her elbow, pulling Piper to her feet and dragging her off just as Lorna and Nicky come up behind them on the way to the cafeteria.

"Hey, Chapman, you gotta satisfy your woman _before_ coming to breakfast. Just a tip," Nicky calls after them.

"Alex, what's going on?"

Alex ignores the question, pulling Piper into the mercifully empty bathroom and passing her the letter. "Did you ever get this one?"

Piper shoots her a concerned look, but gives the letter a perfunctory scan.

"_Piper_."

"I don't know."

"How do you not know?"

"C'mon, Alex, you were writing basically the same thing every time..." She's quiet for a moment, reading more closely, then shakes her head. "Why do you have this?"

"Someone sent it to me." She says it softly, trying to keep a tight hold on the old, familiar fear from those months in Queens, suddenly breathing down the back of her neck. Again.

"What? Who?"

"It was...the return address was my old place. In Queens."

Alex stares at her, waiting, waiting for it to click in Piper's goddamn college brain what's going on, but there's no understanding in her expression. That shouldn't be a surprise. The danger of testifying against Kubra never really sunk in for Piper - Chicago had proven that - but that's probably Alex's own fault. She'd never let Piper see the danger, back then; kept it all glamour and extravagance, downplayed the stakes.

But now she needs Piper to understand.

"Someone had to have taken it from the box in the lobby of my building." She'd been mailing letters every few days. There was a metal box on the wall for outgoing mail, not at all secure, but by the end, she hadn't wanted to leave the building even to walk to a real mailbox. "As in, someone who was _watching my apartment._"

Finally, Piper seems to get it. "Alex..." Her eyes are big. "Alex, are you saying this is from Kubra?"

"Has to be."

"Oh my God..." Piper looks down at the letter with new focus, like Alex's words might be hiding answers. "Why send you _this_?"

"I don't know." Alex hears how she sounds, edgy and panicked, and she hates it. Piper touches her arm and keeps her hand there. "He must've decided he wants me to know he knows where I am."

"Well, he can't hurt you here, right?" Piper says in her practical voice, tinged with maybe the slightest hint of smugness, like this strengthens her argument for sending Alex back here.

"Yeah, he _can_, Pipes," Alex clenches out forcefully. "You heard of a fucking prison hit? Because I know for a fact Kubra has."

"But he'd have to get someone in here, right? That's probably hard to control, it could take him years - "

"Piper, he could have figured out where I was a week after I was arrested. He could have sent this fucking thing as soon as I got here, but he waited months. That means something."

"Something. Something, like...you think someone's already here who's gonna try to hurt you?" Her face tightens, voice catching. "That kind of something?"

"Yeah," Alex says softly, holding Piper's eyes. For a second, something passes between them, the heavy, uncomfortable Might Have Been, if only Piper hadn't had Polly make a phone call.

"Alex..." Piper's shaking her head dazedly without stopping, eyes wild, like she's desperately searching for a way to refute this. "_Alex_."

They step into each other, arms reaching, when footsteps start approaching and they spring the required few feet apart.

Bell steps in, eyeing them suspiciously. "Breakfast time. Get the hell outta here."

Piper's practically stepping on her heels as they walk down to the cafeteria. Their fingers keep brushing, but they don't speak as they move through the food line together, or walk through the cafeteria to sit down across from Lorna and Nicky.

"Twice in one mornin', ladies?" Lorna asks with a smirk.

"We know it was you in the janitor's closet," Nicky clarifies. Before they can answer, she squints at Piper. "Jesus, Chapman, you don't _look_ like someone who just got her pussy fucked. I'd be offended if I were you, Vause."

Alex bumps Piper's elbow with hers, sending her a look to wipe the funeral worthy expression off her face.

* * *

"Who do you think it is?"

"I don't know. Could be anyone who got here in the last month. Maybe longer."

They're sitting at a table with the makeshift Scrabble game, doing a poor job of pretending to play. They'd split up after breakfast that morning, Piper watching Alex go with an expression appropriate to sending her off to have a high risk operation, but she'd returned from work with a determined, _let's fix this_ glint in her eye.

"You should tell someone."

"You know it does fuck all to _tell someone_."

"Okay, what about a weapon - "

"_Indoor_ voice, Pipes. Jesus."

"When Pennsatucky was coming after me, Boo gave me that screwdriver that went missing from electric - "

"Wait, what? How the hell did _Boo_ end up with that?"

"I have no idea, but I was the one who took it from the workshop, so I could maybe - "

"_What_?! You never told me that."

"It was an accident. But I could get one again, Luschek sends us out with tool belts all the time...although, I guess that only worked before because they'd screwed up checking out the tools in our names. Fuck, never mind. I can always keep an eye out, see if anything's left lying around, I really think you should have _something_ to - "

Piper stops talking abruptly as Alex's hand comes up to cover hers.

"What?"

"I'm glad you're here, kid."

The wild urgency in Piper's face softens a little. She lifts her fingers, weaving them through Alex's, eyes darting surreptitiously at the COs across the room as she does.

"In Queens..." Alex trails off, doesn't finish.

In Queens she'd felt a little less helpless. A little less trapped.

In Queens she'd had the weight of a gun under the pillow next to hers.

In Queens she'd had a nuclear option in the back of her mind, the knowledge that she could run anytime it came down to that.

But in Queens she'd been so, so alone.

* * *

Another letter comes. Piper's with her, this time, when Mendez hands it over, and Alex watches the way her face goes pale.

"How many did he fucking _take_?" Alex snaps, feeling a rush of anger and appreciating the strength of it. She looks up at Piper. "Do you have yours, still?"

"Of course."

So they end up in Piper's cube, Piper sitting on her bunk, Alex on the floor leaning against the bed frame. Piper hands over a stack of letters. Thick, but still: "There were definitely more than this."

"Well..." Piper looks away, flinching. "I threw some of them out, without reading them. Just...just a few."

Alex tightens her jaw, a flush of resentment rolling through her. She turns her eyes to the stack of letters, muttering, "Bet you're not so mad I told you not to testify against him now, huh?"

Piper doesn't answer, but the air sours between them, and Alex regrets the comment immediately. She flicks through the stack of letters, not because there's anything to glean from them, but to let the poisonous comment dissolve. Finally, she says neutrally, "You're right, though. It's not like I can tell how many are missing. They're too similar...except the Valentine's Day one, I guess. Seems like he got that one."

"Actually..." Piper trails off, embarrassed.

"You tossed it."

"Yeah."

That provokes a dull pang of hurt, but Alex doesn't let it show on her face. She meets Piper's eye, fumbling for a small smile, not wanting it to get bad again.

Tentatively, Piper asks, "What was different? Besides the red envelope?"

"I just picked out the goofiest Valentine's Day card they had at the drugstore." That was before the car started parking outside her apartment, back when she'd let herself go outside for short, tense ventures that still made her feel watched and exposed. She's relearning that feeling now, here. "Thought maybe it'd make you laugh and then you'd read the rest." Shadows pass over Piper's face, and Alex makes herself smirk. "Actually I'm glad Kubra didn't get that one...not good for my cred. He may be trying to kill me, but at least I've got respect."

But that seems to upset Piper more. "Don't joke."

Silently, Alex passes back the stack of letters back to Piper, who turns them over and over in her hands for a moment before suddenly, violently hurling them away, scattering pages across the cube.

"Piper."

"I _hate_ this, Alex."

"Well, I do, too."

"It's not fucking _right_. Someone should_ do_ something, you shouldn't have to just sit around and wait."

"That's how it works, Pipes. No one here gives a shit. They'd just throw me in SHU so they don't have to deal with it."

"That's bullshit."

"I know."

"_Fuck." _

Alex suddenly feels very, very tired. She lets her head drop onto Piper's knee, feeling a warm rush of relief when she immediately sends her fingers swimming through Alex's hair, soft, gentle strokes that directly contradict the tight rage of her muttered curses.

Alex relaxes for a second, and then it occurs to her that Piper can be dangerous. Piper sometimes tricks her into thinking everything's going to be okay.

* * *

Piper keeps talking about Pennsatucky, relaying all the fighting tips she got when she was being threatened, and Alex listens patiently before explaining that it won't be the same thing.

She knows what to expect from this; no warning, no build up. Just a single second she lowers her guard, crept up on or passed in a hall by someone she doesn't know to be afraid of, and that'll be it. Shiv to the gut, the throat, a blow to the back of the head. She can only hope for poorly made weapons, for enough conscious time for her instincts to kick in and fight back.

"I should probably consider myself lucky," she says grimly to Piper at the end of one of those discussions, prompting a look as if she's said something nonsensical.

"Why the hell would this be _lucky_?"

"I told you, Pipes. Kubra's about sick, deep revenge. He doesn't do quick and merciful, he wants you to suffer."

Piper looks slightly nauseous. "Did you ever see him...?"

"No," she says quietly. "But I heard stories."

Horror stories that had run on an endless reel through her mind, all those nights in her empty apartment.

"This will at least be fast."

"Stop," Piper says forcefully. "Stop talking about it like it's definitely happening. You're being careful."

She _is _being careful.

She develops new instincts, surveying every room before she walks into it, making specific note of any inmates who were more recently incarcerated. She stops aiming for low traffic times for the bathroom. There is no more idle passing in the corridor, no more seeking out quiet, empty spaces.

Piper is with her everywhere she's allowed to be, starting from outside her cube every morning. She essentially escorts Alex to work every day, and still looks weak with relief every time Alex shows back up again. One Saturday Piper's brother comes to visit, she leaves Alex playing cards with Lorna and Boo, but the game ends before she's back, and when Piper finds her in her cube, there's a split second where Alex thinks Piper's going to hit her.

* * *

"I had an idea."

They're in Alex's cube, on either end of her bunk, and Piper's eyes are lit up with triumph.

"Okay..."

"Something you said the other day, about how they'd just put you in SHU."

"Yeah."

"Maybe you should. If you do something and get thrown in there - "

"Are you fucking serious? Pipes, you were in SHU for, what, a day? And you _still_ talk about how terrible it was."

"Alex, it's better than getting fucking shivved to death! You'd be safe there -"

"Yeah, until they let me out, and then I'm right back where I started. Jesus, Piper, what am I supposed to do, stay in SHU forever? For _five more years? _Then I get out, and Kubra's waiting to fucking do it himself?"

Piper visibly deflates, but instinctive defenses flare in her eyes. "It would at least buy some time."

"Yeah, _shit_ time where I'm locked in a box. That doesn't help me."

A muscle's pulsing in Piper's jaw, thunder rolling through her eyes, so Alex knows the outburst is coming even before Piper finally snarls at her, "You don't fucking _want_ help, Alex! Every thing I say, you shut it down, like you're just gonna fucking accept this. Like there's _nothing_ you can do about it. Well, _fuck_ that, Alex. Fuck you. _I _don't accept it."

Piper's red faced and fighting tears by the time she finishes, but Alex just holds her gaze with steely, dangerous calm.

"What do you expect me to do, Piper? You think I'm not _trying_?" She lowers her voice to a hissing whisper. "That I'm not looking over my shoulder every fucking minute, that I don't have to fucking count how many people are in the bathroom before I go into a shower? I am _terrified_ right now. And of course I want to fucking fight back if someone jumps me, but I _don't know _who to watch out for. I don't know when it's coming. And I can't do anything about that, I can't even fucking run, because I'm _stuck here_."

The last sentence lands between them like a grenade, smoking with the implied accusation, the unspoken ending: _because of you_.

Silence chokes for a long, horrible moment, before Piper tilts her face away and gets up from the bed, hurrying out of the cube and back to her own, still within eyesight.

* * *

Every night now, Lights Outs cues up a fight between exhaustion and cold, creeping fear. Exhaustion is the reigning victor, but it takes hours for it to win.

That night, she's almost asleep when someone puts weight on the end of her mattress, and for just a second, Alex every nerve jolts with panic.

Then she realizes it's Piper, fitting herself next to Alex on the narrow mattress, uninvited. Alex is about to hiss something about scaring her half to death, when suddenly Piper's face is against her neck and Alex realizes she's crying.

"Sssshhh..." Alex shifts, making room, wrapping her arms around Piper. "It's okay." She kisses the crown of her head, then, "Pipes, you gotta go, someone's gonna see you."

"I'm sorry." Her breath is hot and wet against Alex's collarbone. Alex goes still, trying to remember if Piper's ever said that to her before. "I'm sorry, Alex..." She lifts her head to look at Alex for the first time, tears glistening in the not-quite-dark of the prison dormitory. "If something fucking happens to you, it's my fault. You could have been far away from him, but I..." Her voice cracks with a soft but audible whimper, and Alex gently puts a finger to her lips. Whispering again, Piper finishes thickly, "I wish I'd just let you leave."

"I don't," Alex whispers back, meaning it more than she would have thought possible three months ago.

The time they've had isn't enough, she wants more, they _deserve_ so much fucking more time. So it's not the time that makes this worth it; it's Piper's certainty. It's the fact that she waited for forgiveness, and ever since Alex gave it, she hasn't once felt like Piper might bail.

"I'm just glad he won't come after you." For once, there's no trace of smugness or bitterness to the words, no subtle reminder how furious Piper was with Alex for telling her to do something that might have saved her life. Alex holds her close, burying the words in Piper's hair. "And you get out in a few months." What she means is _you'll be okay_.

"Don't," Piper bites out, her voice collapsing just before her lips find Alex's, a salty, delicate kiss.

Alex's throat narrows, and she feels a sudden, powerful rush of longing and loss. While she still can, she pulls away and says roughly, "Pipes, you gotta go before they make another round."

Reluctantly, she disentangles herself from Alex, glancing around before sliding off the bunk. "I love you."

Alex is pretty sure she can't say the words without losing it. "Me, too."

Alex listens to Piper's footsteps, padding out of her cube and across the dorm, and then she loses it anyway, pressing her face into her pillow and shaking with hard, silent sobs until exhaustion finally wins.

* * *

"Chapel's free," Alex murmurs in Piper's ear the next day, not breaking stride as she grabs her hand and leads her out of the library, through the blessedly crowded hallways and into the empty chapel, up onto the stage, behind the altar.

"Should we be in here?" Piper asks nervously, glancing around. "It's kind of isolated."

"I can be fast," Alex hums against her neck, already settling herself between Piper's knees. She smirks. "Besides, no point of living if we don't get to fuck."

Piper _almost_ smiles at that, then arches up to kiss Alex.

Somehow, the levity dissolves within seconds and they both realize it. The sex is panicked and crazy and desperate, and they're both breathless and tearful by the end of it. After, Alex keeps kissing Piper so she won't see her face.

There are footsteps at the backdoor of the chapel, and they both have to scramble to hide behind the altar, pulling on clothes in a silent rush, and Alex is grateful, because the mad, stealthy run out of the chapel saves them from having to acknowledge the current of strange, waiting grief pulsing between them.

* * *

Alex is at a table the library, waiting for Piper to get out of work and half listening to Lorna reading aloud from a fashion magazine when they hear someone barking out, "Oh, SHIT!" from down the corridor.

The hall room goes silent for a moment, waiting for a follow up. When nothing happens, the chatter hums back to life, and Alex returns to her book.

Then O'Neil runs in and says something to Bennett, who's hovering at the door of the library, and a second later the two of them hustle off with an intensity that brings a crowd of curious inmates moving after them.

She's probably safer in a crowd, so Alex gets up and moves with them, even though the corridor is already filling up, and the tight knit push of bodies makes Alex feel trapped and lightheaded. She fights down the urge to turn around and move against the flow of inmates, get out, just to get some fucking air, but it's not a good idea to isolate herself while everyone's distracted by whatever fight is occupying their attention.

But instead of catcalls and jeers, a hush of whispers starts to sweep from the front of the crowd. Alex is taking paranoid note of everyone in her immediate vicinity, making her the only person not trying to push forward and see what's going on, when suddenly Boo's in front of her, looking awkward and shaken. "Hey, Vause, uh...you should go back, you don't wanna see that..."

Alex doesn't know, not yet, her brain doesn't hold onto Boo's words, doesn't even imagine the possibility, but she seems to know it in her shaking hands that push urgently past Boo and Lorna, and in her fast, purposeful feet that take her to the front of the crowd where she sees Piper

lying

on the

ground.

And blood.

Blood and blood and blood.

* * *

But -

* * *

_No_.

* * *

"_Pipes_," she practically shrieks it, and everyone goes quiet, watching. Alex feels yanked forward, toward Piper, but a guard steps in front of her, shoves a hand roughly against her chest, _stay back inmate_, she can't stop looking, someone tugs on the back of her shirt, but she doesn't go, just looks, because most of the blood isn't on Piper, it's splattered across the white tile, it's not even on _her_, just her throat, it's coming from her throat, and there are flecks on her chin and oh oh God oh fuck her eyes are open, wide fucking open and staring at nothing and there's no light in her eyes there's no _Piper_ there, and no one is trying to stop the blood, no one's checking her pulse, no one is even goddamn _touching_ her they're just _leaving_ her there by herself and they won't let Alex through.

Suddenly the alarm goes off, and everyone lays face down in an uncomfortably crowded cluster except for Alex. Mendez gets in her face, "Hit the fuckin' floor, inmate."

"No," That's Healey, coming up from behind him. "No, start with her."

He pats her down roughly, checking for a weapon. Like they think she did this.

Alex doesn't take her eyes off Piper.

"Alright, on the ground."

She can't move.

* * *

It was the letters.

The letters where she'd told Piper, over and over again, that she'd been trying to protect her.

_Begging_ letters, all pathetic desperation, the spaces between words pulsing with need, with _forgive me talk to me you have to you're all I have left_.

Letters she'd always signed _love_.

Kubra doesn't want fast or merciful.

Kubra wants suffering.

Sick

deep

revenge.

* * *

Everyone watches as the medics come, while they kneel over Piper with no real urgency, while they unfold a stretcher. Alex has only moved when forced, when a guard shoved her to the ground and then again when Nicky came and pulled her back up, saying her name, trying to pull her attention away from Piper and not being able to.

Around her people are hugging and sniffling and breathing hard, but Alex can't stop crawling around inside the wrongness of this. It's _not supposed to be_ Piper instead of her. This is a world-breaking mistake.

They get out a black body bag and start lifting her into it, and for some reason it occurs to Alex, only then, that Piper is dead. It feels like new information, freshly realized.

Inside her chest, her heart wrecks.

Unblinking, she watches them zip up the body in a body bag and lift it onto the stretcher and that's it, Alex is never going to see Piper again, not ever.

"Vause." Nicky again. Without a response, she tries, gentler, "Alex."

They wheel Piper's body away, and Alex's head fills with childish panic: _I wanna go with you_.

_Don't leave don't you fucking leave me._

A light comes on, the COs order them back to the dormitories for count. Nicky grabs Alex's arm and forcibly tugs.

The guards come in and unceremoniously upend their bunks, throwing their things around, still looking for weapons. When they go, her bunk mate and all her neighbors head back inside the cubes, cleaning.

Alex stays where she is. She hasn't yet shed the feeling from the past few weeks, the feeling that she could die at any moment, and right then the grief takes her over, she is out of her head with it, and she thinks, _now_, this is it, this is what's going to kill her.

When they dragged her to the dormitory, Nicky and Lorna were murmuring something about her being in shock, but that's not right, that means feeling nothing. Alex is feeling everything, and it is going to kill her. The world is cracked in half, it's an apocalypse inside her head, and she's trying to keep it there but it wants to get out.

Suddenly her whole body lurches, harsh breath colliding with her clenched teeth, and Alex sits down hard, just inside her bunk, both hands clasped over her lips like she's physically holding in a scream. Her body isn't working, she's shaking violently, like something seismic is going on in her bones and she is about to shatter.

This is it this is it this is it right now this is the dying it has to be it was _supposed to be her_.

An animal wail pulls itself out of her throat, around her defenseless hands, and that's all it takes. Her glasses clatter to the floor as Alex drops her head into the cushion of her arms, shielding herself as violent sobs beat against her chest and throat, tears suddenly pouring. Drowning her.

* * *

_Piper._

* * *

She gets up that night and crawls into Piper's empty bunk. In the bed beside it, Red's still awake; she cranes her neck to look when Alex walks in, her eyes big and white in the dark, but then she only waves a hand for Alex to come on in, then discreetly turns her face toward the wall while Alex buries her face in Piper's pillow and sobs like a child. For the past five hours, since she broke down but didn't die, crying has been like breathing. A constant, always thing.

* * *

The next morning Alex sits in the floor of Piper's cube and shreds every letter she ever wrote into confetti sized pieces, until the pads of her fingers are red and sore.

Red goes to breakfast and leaves her alone, but later she comes back with Nicky and Lorna and Boo and Sister Ingalls and Yoga Jones and Norma. A few of them have boxes. They all pull up short at the sight of Alex, on the ground surrounding by bits of paper, and everyone looks at Nicky like _she _may be the one who can talk to Alex, like anything she says might matter now.

"We told 'em not to go near the stuff. That we'd take care of it." Awkwardly, she holds up a box. "Figure you'll want keep most of it, but, uh...we can help box it up so the fuckers don't just toss it."

Alex doesn't answer, and they all exchange nervous looks but come in anyway and start stacking Piper's books into boxes. Alex wishes they'd get out, she wants to yell at them to get their hands off Piper's things, but it's like she's forgotten how to talk. She just blinks out more tears and puts her forehead on her knees to pretend they aren't there.

Like when Tricia Miller died, other women come by with food and kind words and contraband alcohol. They always let their eyes land on Alex when they offer condolences, but no one talks to her directly. They seem afraid to. Boo and Lorna and the others get excited at all the offerings, and Alex _hates_ them for it, for acting like they have any claim on this loss. She and Piper barely existed on the outskirts of this prison "family", but they didn't need that, they had each other. Most of the time.

When the boxes are full and everyone's crowded on Piper and Red's beds, full tilt into a party, Alex is trying to let their voices blur into white noise, but their laughter clatters in her ears, building to an overpowering, angry roar.

"...stomping around the dorms, practically growling and taking her stuff back."

"No one thought she'd be back, after what she did to 'Tucky...never'd've thought she had it in her."

"Far fuckin' cry from the WASPy princess who couldn't figure out where to sit in the cafeteria...I can't believe _you_ weren't trying to fuck her by day one, Nichols."

"Nah, she needed my uncompromised help. I took her under my wing...remember she kept saying stuff she'd _read_ about prison, like she was studying for the goddamn SATs..."

"Shut up."

Alex's voice is a rough, weightless thing, barely audible amid the others' laughter, but they still fall silent instantly.

Gaining strength, she repeats, "Shut the fuck up." Her voice wavers. "Don't make fun of her."

"Vause, hey..." Nicky gives her a conciliatory look. "We're just remembering. No one's being mean."

Everyone murmurs in assent, a few of them chiming in to say how much they liked Piper, what a great friend she was. Alex wants to get away from them, but she's not going to be the one to leave Piper's bunk.

"You know what, get out. Take all the fucking food and go."

Nicky sighs. "Alex, c'mon..."

"It is kinda _Red's_ cube," Boo mutters.

"She's right, though," Red puts in crisply, in that authoritative tone that they all unfailingly listen to. "Up, girls, I've had just about all I can take of this piss poor funeral. We did our good deed, cleaned up. Let's give it some space."

Alex presses the heels of her hands over her eyes while they all shuffle out without protest. When she looks up, Red is still there, watching her.

"Always have found these little death parties too depressing for my taste," she says conversationally. Alex can feel her throat closing up again, blocking words. When she doesn't answer, Red's features soften, and she says in that brusquely gentle way she has, "You take some time, honey." She starts out of the cube, but pauses outside the doorway. "I remember when you both first got here..._you_ broke the rules of my kitchen to sneak that girl cornbread." Red laughs once, smug. "As if I don't have eyes everywhere. Stubborn thing didn't even eat it." She smiles. "You give a hell of a foot massage, though. Much more satisfying than Chapman's back cream."

Red strides off, then, leaving Alex alone with Piper's boxed up possessions.

She starts to sweep the bits of paper into her hands, making a pile to scoop into Piper's small wastebasket. It takes forever, they're so thinly shredded, and she's crying again, the paper sticking to her fingers where she's wiping her eyes.

Finally, Alex gives up on the mess and picks up one of the boxes. People stare while she walks back and forth to her own bunk, storing Piper's things under her bed. When she's done, she takes her pillow and switches it with the one from Piper's bed.

Alex had taken her pillowcase from the hotel room in Paris, too. She'd hated herself for how pathetic and foolish that was, but this time she doesn't give a fuck.

* * *

It's her fault.

She'd blamed Piper for getting her sent back here, but really, Alex had asked for it. She could have just run. She could have just left Piper hating her, forget the goddamn letters.

She can trace it back and back, all the times they hurt each other: Piper sent her back here. Alex made her a perjurer. Piper picked Larry. Alex got Piper sent here in the first place. Piper left.

But it always comes back to Alex.

She asked Piper to carry that bag.

And still Alex had never thought she'd be the one left needing forgiveness that's never going to come.

She's sure as hell not forgiving herself.

* * *

She's not aware of much for the next few days.

They haven't found who did it. A weapon shows up, a sharpened toothbrush caked in dried blood, but it's been abandoned in the yard, and no one seems to have a clue even in the rumors. Alex is too out of it to pay attention, to see if any of the new inmates she'd been watching closely are observing her now, watching the real target of their attack.

She's too out of it to do much of anything.

She keeps thinking about her mom's funeral, though she's never been able to remember much about it, other than the open casket, other than calling Piper outside the viewing room and not getting an answer.

Alex isn't mad anymore. She wants so badly to tell Piper that.

She goes days without speaking, without eye contact. Nicky calls her Norma Jr, once, but stops when Alex doesn't acknowledge the joke. Nicky stops trying with her. Everyone else does, too.

Alex is supposed to be suffering, that's the whole point of what happened, so she gives herself over to it. It's a constant, always thing.

And alongside that, she's still waiting.

Because she heard the stories, of Kubra's _sick deep revenge_, she heard about hours of torture, of grotesquely creative ways of death. It all still ended eventually. She never heard anything like this.

Surely something will end it.

* * *

She gets a letter and nearly rips it in half without a glance, but then her eyes catch a glimpse of the return address, and it's not her own name.

It's Polly's.

It's a short note, like the kind she got from Larry Bloom last year: a request to be put on her visitor's list.

She never liked Polly, and Polly never liked her, but she was the only person from Piper's world who'd always known Alex existed. And if she wants to come here and blame Alex for getting Piper killed, well. It's not like she doesn't deserve that.

Polly comes ten days after Piper died, and she looks nervous and edgy but okay. She's not in pieces. She looks surprised when she sees Alex, but it's been almost ten years, so Alex isn't sure where the surprise comes from.

"This is awkward," Polly says right away. She pauses, maybe waiting for Alex to agree, but Alex is barely verbal at the moment. She just waits, getting ready for the tirade that's coming. "I don't want to be here, but...I have to know." Polly's voice catches, and she takes Alex completely by surprise when she asks, "Did Piper hate me?"

Alex meets her eyes for the first time, realizing that of course none of them know the hit was connected to her, or to Kubra. They think it's random. Everyone does.

When Alex doesn't immediately answer, Polly anxiously fills the silence, "I mean, she couldn't have, right? She didn't want him anymore, she wanted...she wanted _you. _I'm assuming. Since she had me send you back here...oh." She winces. "Did you know that?"

Alex nods.

"Right, good. So I did what she asked, and she said that would make it up to her, but we still...we didn't really talk. So I have to know..." Her eyes well up with tears and genuine despair. "Did she hate me?"

Alex swallows a few times. "No." Her voice is scraped raw. "She didn't."

Polly's shoulders relax, and she closes her eyes for a moment, nodding a little. Then, just as quickly, her face hardens, and she levels a glare at Alex. "Don't think I don't hate _you_ for this. It's your fault." For a moment, Alex is confused, then Polly continues, "She never would've been here. People like Piper aren't supposed to get _killed_. Especially not in prison."

"I know."

"So I _do_ blame you," Polly grits out. Alex nods along with her, taking it. "Don't get me wrong there. I just..." She sighs. "Were you together?"

The word feels like a splinter in her throat. "Yes."

"So she got what she wanted." Polly nods. "Good. You know...she wasn't telling me much, back then. She never even made it sound serious, with you, but I've never seen her that happy."

Alex's throat tightens, hot, familiar tears prickling at her eyes, but then Polly narrows her gaze.

"And, you...I have no fucking idea if any of it was ever real for you. If you ever actually cared about her, or if you were using her, or what. But I hope to God you at least made her happy, before..."

Fuck Polly. The curse carves itself out of Alex's chest and rattles around, dizzying. Fuck her, fuck her, _fuck her_. She has no idea, no clue what Piper was to Alex.

But that's not Polly's fault, not really. So Alex looks away and grits her teeth so hard her jaw starts to ache, determined not to cry in front of Polly, but also, bizarrely, not wanting her to leave.

She wants to keep talking about Piper.

"How's, um. How's Cal?"

Polly looks surprised, as though Alex shouldn't know the name of Piper's brother. "I don't know, at the moment. His wife took him on some sort of grief pilgrimage. He was having a rough time at the funeral, though."

Alex lets out a sharp, gasp of a breath. "The funeral..." It takes her a moment to get the words together. "What was it like? What did they do with her?"

"Buried in the family plot. Back in Connecticut. The funeral was at their old church...open casket."

Alex shudders, revulsion rolling through her. Piper thought open caskets were creepy, she'd hated having to see her grandfather's when she was a kid. And Alex is sure the funeral talked about God and Heaven even though Piper didn't believe in either of those things.

She thinks about Piper's parents, fuck, they barely knew their own daughter, that has always been true, and all at once Alex feels dizzy and claustrophobic and she wants to grab Polly and shake her, wants to yell _I love her, you fucking idiot, I've loved her for nine years and I never needed her to be perfect I love her more than anything and she loved me and none of you people have any fucking idea._

She could say all that, but then Polly could say _you're the reason she's dead_ and that would be just as true.

Alex has no right to feel so goddamn superior.

So she sends her chair screeching back and shoots to her feet, leaving the visitation room with barely a nod to Polly, and then she doesn't stop moving until she finds Nicky, lying on her bed, headphones on, bobbing her head to the music.

"Hey." Alex jerks the headphones off, and Nicky pulls a pissed face in the second before she registers who it is. "You're going to let me in on your stash."

Shock flickers across her features, and then Nicky's face shuts down. "I don't know what the fuck you're talking about."

"Don't bullshit me, you think I can't tell when someone's fucking high? I haven't said shit to you for months, it's not my business, but now you're going to have to share. Otherwise I'll bust you." This is more than Alex has said in over a week. Her throat is dry from the effort.

Nicky's blinking up at her like she can't quite decipher if Alex is serious.

Alex feels her harsh, demanding exterior slip a little bit, and she makes a breathy, desperate sound. "Nicky. I need it."

Something in Nicky's eyes relaxes into sympathy, and though Alex loathes everyone's sympathy, she recognizes this as an acquiescence.

"Thought you were a lousy junkie?"

"Then I guess it's time I get better."

* * *

She has been here before, chasing chemical euphoria to forget a loss, convincing herself the high made up for her mom and Piper being gone.

Back then, Alex had deluded herself that she was still in control. It was _strength_, snorting, injecting, whatever, it was fixing her. It was making a choice to stop feeling bad.

Now, she has no illusions. This is weakness. She is supposed to be suffering, but she can't take it anymore.

So Alex locks herself in a bathroom stall and sends the drugs after grief like soldiers in a war. And she keeps going, not chasing euphoria this time, just oblivion.

* * *

She makes Nicky show her where it's all hidden, so she can help herself anytime. She can tell Nicky isn't thrilled about sharing, but it's hard to say no to Alex right now.

It does its job, it is medicine medicine, turning the hurt down to a dim, manageable shadow and letting her function.

She doesn't think she's dying anymore. The drugs know that's ridiculous, no one ever died from sadness or loss, not when it's so easy to turn them off.

Nicky has a _massive_ amount of heroin, but Alex has over five more years inside and she doubts the two of them can make it last. But it needs to last, because those years stack up and overwhelm her, even moreso when she realizes there's no pleasure in getting out.

There's nothing waiting for her.

She can leave prison, leave the chapel where Piper first kissed her again after eight years, leave the bunk where Piper used to sleep, leave the hallway that had been painted with her blood, but there is no leaving the fact that she's gone.

And Alex knows all about that, because sometimes even now, _especially _now, she wakes up wanting her mom so badly she can't see straight.

Love can't be killed, so it kills her instead, too slowly. Except when she drugs it silent. Alex thinks about that sometimes, that maybe it's not the pain the heroin goes after, but the love. They're so twisted up together there's barely a difference.

But no. She can't quite believe there's a moment, even when she's out of her mind high, that she doesn't love Piper.

* * *

It doesn't take much, at first, but her tolerance builds itself up again and Alex keeps pushing it. It isn't a strength but it is a necessity, and _this_ isn't something she'll waste time feeling bad about.

Eventually, inevitably, she takes too much, and Alex is lucid enough to know it'll be obvious, so she stays locked in the bathroom stall while her breathing slows and her muscles twitch and she has to keep herself from laughing out loud, because really, this is fucking _hilarious_, how fucking ironic would it be if the _heroin_ killed her? Oh well. Whatever whatever whatever. Get her out of here five years early, at least. She laughs again. It's hard to keep her eyes open. No one would be surprised. They'd maybe think it was tragic and romantic, even...like a lesbian _Romeo and Juliet_. Ha. She'll have to tell Pipes that one. But Pipes'll probably roll her eyes and give some lecture about how _Romeo and Juliet_ isn't romantic, that if you think about it, Shakespeare wouldn't have included Romeo pining after some other girl in the beginning if he wanted people to take the love story seriously. Okay, so Piper's definitely given her that lecture before. Years ago. Alex laughs again and it's more like a wet hiss. Her skin is cold and she's starting to nod out, she really could die, it never felt like this before, after Paris, so maybe she's already dying and that actually doesn't suck at all. There's another bag tucked into the waistband of her pants, that would probably do it, maybe that's easier. It takes awhile to make her fingers work and she gets it out and spreads it messily across the back of her hand.

Suddenly Piper rises out of the recesses of her mind and scowls at her in disgust.

_What the fuck is this? Why are you doing this_ _now? _

It was an accident.

_Bullshit. Isn't this why you started? _

What? No.

_Why should you get to let yourself off the hook? _

Right. Off the hook. That's what this is. This is so fucking easy.

_If you were going to check out, you should've just done it back in Queens. Saved us some trouble._

You think I didn't think about it?!

_Oh, well, lot of good that does me. I can't do shit with what you thought about._

Shut up.

_Right now it's useless. Not to mention pathetic. _

Fuck you, Piper.

_You don't deserve the easy way out, Alex. You're supposed to have to live with it._

Fuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyou...

"_FUCK_."

Someone slaps her in the face.

"Vause, you fucking idiot...you tryin' to get us both sent to SHU? Christ..."

Someone slaps her again.

Alex slits her eyes open and sees Nicky, pissed off and panicked, checking her pulse and looking at her fingernails.

Alex lets out a protesting wine, clumsily trying to shove Nicky off her. "God, chill."

Nicky looks like she wants to throttle her. "_Chill? _You look like a fucking corpse. Shit..." She straightens up, looking around the stall. "It's all over the goddamn floor." She shoves Alex out and starts wiping up. Alex watches with detachment, Piper's voice still in her head, trying to be heard underneath the drugs.

"You are fucking _cut off_," Nicky says when she's finished.

"You can't move it all," Alex counters flatly.

"I've done it before. I'm not letting you screw me because you don't give a shit about being smart." She pauses, then lowers her voice, "And I'm not gonna be the one handing you a fucking loaded gun either."

* * *

When she's sober, she finds Nicky and jerks her out of Lorna and Boo's earshot.

"You know I detox, they'll start an investigation. Same as an OD."

Nicky's arches an eyebrow. "Well, fuck, if it's happening either way, guess I'll go with detox."

"Not if you don't want me naming my source," Alex counters bluntly. She leans in close. "You want to keep it, I get to, too. That's how this is going to work."

Nicky's eyes are wild, and Alex's recognizes the trapped look there. They all have it, the clients, the junkies. Probably Alex, too, now. She knows how to use it.

Nicky shakes her head, a giving in. "You know...Chapman wouldn't want you doing this shit."

Alex feels a rush of resentment; as if Nicky's so much better. "Don't talk to me about her."

"She's gone, Vause. You loved her, but she died. And you gotta figure out a way to live with that."

Alex gives her a cold look. "What do you think I've been doing?"

* * *

An hour later, she's still wading through anger at the conversation with Nicky, and is suddenly seized with the need to go correct her, when she said Alex _loved_ Piper. It suddenly seems very, very important to clarify.

Alex loves Piper. Present tense. That hasn't changed. Alex isn't the one who's dead, even though she was supposed to be.

Alex loves Piper loved Alex loves Piper loved Alex loves Piper loved Alex and the tenses don't match and there's nothing she can do about it.

* * *

**A/N: **_Okay, so sorry about this whole fic. Not a great way to break a fic hiatus, and like I said, it was a rush job and not my best. I've been working on some original projects that were on deadline, and am still wrapping those up now._

_ I've got several things in my mental docket - Summer Camp sequel, Young Blood Middle School Alex oneshot, and a Band AU - but they're all more involved, and as soon as I came up with this concept, it wouldn't leave me alone, and I knew I could do it fairly briefly without taking much time. Not that it ended up very short in length, but it could have been way longer. I kept things pretty surface. Hopefully more, happier stuff soonish._


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